It’s Time for Women’s Leadership

A few weeks ago I wrote about the business benefits of hiring and promoting women. Your small business will reap the benefits of doing so.

Additionally, you will display you sustainable colors by supporting SDG #5 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals – Achieve Gender Equality and Empower All Women and Girls.

Recently, New Jersey was the sight of the first Metro Women’s Leadership Summit that was filled with fascinating speakers from the worlds of business and politics and interesting women leaders who came to listen and share their observations.

I’d like to introduce to you my wife, Oksana Dlaboha of HR Tie Breaker, a participant, and share with you her thoughts on this historic event.

It’s time for women’s leadership.

An exceptional group of women decided that it’s high time for the metropolitan area to convene The Metro Women's Leadership Summit – an event that would generate awareness, an event where women (and a few righteous brothers) would gather to share the best of the best: ideas, practices, improvements, insights and concepts that make their businesses unique.

Such an event took place on Friday, June 1, at the Newark Airport Marriott Hotel.

On the home page of the summit website, the word “climbing” in the phrase “climbing the ladder” was crossed out with a red pen and replaced with the phrase “redefining the ladder,” which placed the emphasis on the ladder and perhaps destination rather than the climb. Interesting, isn’t it?

Carol Gabel, executive director of the Metro Women’s Leadership Summit and president of Seven Pearls, a risk management and small business development firm, explained that today’s women don’t climb the ladder, they are redefining it and describing their own path to success.

The keynote speakers at the summit were three powerful women in business and politics: New Jersey First Lady Tammy Snyder Murphy, Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver and Sandra Yancey, founder of eWomenNetwork. They gave us, participants, a lot of food for thought as we set out to redefine the ladder or our destination.

Oliver said leadership is the only ship that doesn’t return to port in a storm and described the key to business success is diversity and inclusion. At the end of her speech, Oliver recited a beautiful poem by Ruby Dee called “Calling All Women,” in which every line was more than powerful and had a direct relation to the event.  

Calling all women.

To steal away to our secret place.

Have a meeting face to face.

Look at the facts and determine our pace.

Calling all women.

Come help us start to bridge the gaps

Racial, cultural, or generation

We want some action and veneration.

We got to get together or die.

Now is the time for an evolution

Let’s all search and find a solution

For how we’ll make it to the next revolution.

Oliver set the tone, and in this atmosphere, all 100 speakers in more than 40 breakout sessions delivered a range of ideas and insights for all participants throughout the day. The Metro Summit was an event in which every participant had an opportunity to find her interest - from leadership advice to health topics, from business to personal, hearing new trends, and networking with interesting people.

It was truly a reunion of powerful women, whose ideas resounded in one loud and powerful voice.

It was definitely a time to applaud leadership, where creativity was encouraged, and it was really time when every woman received her own, just reward.

Can’t wait for the next summit.

As I had written, none of this means that you have to turn your company upside down. It means that you run your business in a responsible, inclusive manner with genuinely equal opportunities for every employee. And you will reap the benefits. Businesses that participate in the Sustainable Development Goals stand to experience an unbelievable windfall. The SDGs have the potential to unleash innovation, economic growth and development at an unprecedented scale and could be worth at least $12 trillion a year in market opportunities and generate up to 380 million new jobs by 2030.

Join the conversation in cyberspace about women’s empowerment, sustainability and boosting your outreach. If you have examples, let me know about it and I’ll help you spread the word about your success.

Scroll through my blog to read about more ways to boost your outreach.

I’d also like to invite you to visit my Thought Leadership website:

http://thoughtleadership.yolasite.com/              

If you’re looking for advice on recruiting, company handbooks and other human resources topics, I’d like to suggest to you this interesting website:

http://hrtiebreaker.yolasite.com/